72 Missed calls 35 Messages 14 Voicemails
by lastella25
Summary: Sometime between her phone dropping to the floor, her dad's frantic yelling and the drive to the hospital she realized that this will most likely be the worst day of her life. One-shot. Spoilers up to 'Big Brother'. Trigger Warning: Character Death


When the first wave of phone calls started, she was in the shower. She had spent a few extra hours after glee practising for her audition, and all she wanted to do when she got home was relax and unwind.

—

The second wave of phone calls started while she was downstairs at the dinner table, waiting for Finn to arrive for a quiet dinner with her parents.

He's usually late to these kinds of things, so she didn't think to check her phone to check if he left any messages.

She didn't know her phone had been on silent.

—

By the time 8:30pm rolled around, she couldn't shake this weighing feeling in her stomach and excused herself from the table to check her phone to see why Finn hasn't tried to contact her to explain why he was late.

When she looked at her phone she furrowed her brow and felt that weighing feeling in her gut double in size.

72 missed calls. 35 messages. 14 voicemails.

Her heart started to race and her mind began to panic.

She quickly swiped at her phone and tried to go through all of the messages. Her mind and heart were racing as she tried to read all the messages as quick as she could, words like_ accident _and_ hospital _and _surgery _blurring together. The word_ Quinn _seemed to jump off the screen and cut into her chest.

She gave up on the text messages and scrambled to call into her voicemail.

_[April 20th - 5:02p.m. - Noah Puckerman] Rachel, you need to…my God, you need to call me back as soon as you get this. Something's happened. Call me, Rachel, it's important._

_[April 20th - 5:11p.m. - Tina Cohen-Chang] Rachel? Rachel, where are you? Please call me back, I…I don't want to explain on here so call me back when you get this._

She skipped the next few voicemails until they're from a later time, hoping that something someone said will ease the ripping feeling in her chest.

_[April 20th - 7:37p.m. - Kurt Hummel] Rachel, where are you? We're all at the hospital and waiting for her to come out of surgery. Rachel, you should BE here. Where in the hell are you? Don't even bother calling back, just COME._

_[April 20th - 7:52p.m. - Santana Lopez] Rachel. *a sigh and a pause* God, Rachel, she was asking for you when she got here. Where the fuck have you been? _

She couldn't wait anymore and skipped to the last message.

_[April 20th - 8:12p.m. - Noah Puckerman] Rachel. I'm…I'm sorry, Rachel. I'm so, so sorry. She's…Quinn is-_

She couldn't hear it. She couldn't take it anymore.

Sometime between her phone dropping to the floor, her dad's frantic yelling and the drive to the hospital she realized that this will most likely be the worst day of her life.

—

She saw it on their faces the moment she stepped into the emergency waiting room. Until that moment she could believe whatever intricate lie her brain came up with to explain what was happening, but by then she came face to face with the truth and felt her chest cave into herself.

They must have seen it on her face, and by the time Puck had rushed to her side she hadn't even realized that she was crumpled on the floor - crying her eyes out and screaming into his chest.

—

Car accidents are the kinds of things that were only expected to happen once in a lifetime. They already seem like one of those things that will never happen to you in the first place, so if by chance it actually _had _happened once, you know it couldn't possibly happen again, right?

But that's the thing with Quinn Fabray - she's too special to do anything by the norm.

—

The funeral took place on a Tuesday. The sky was overcast and it kept raining on and off all day. If she were her normal self, she would've appreciated the dramatics of it all.

But she wasn't her normal self. And as she stared at the white casket being lowered into the ground, she realized she hadn't been her normal self for a very long time.

—

She skipped out on the reception afterwards. She heard the muffled voices of people's protests in the background, but she ignored them and walked quickly to her car.

Finn was waiting by her car and she didn't even look him in the eye when she placed the ring in his hand and said, "I can't." This seemed like all he needed to understand because he just stepped aside and said, "I know. Take care of yourself, OK?"

She stepped inside car and could see everyone gathering around the plot, saying their last goodbyes. She shifted into drive and never looked back.

—

When she got home she curled into a ball and called Quinn's cell phone on repeat, suddenly hit with the fact that this is the only way she'll be able to hear the soft voice of the girl who had always been the one to tell her right from wrong.

She cried herself to sleep that night, Quinn's voice filling her dreams.

—

It had been over a week since she'd last gone to school. Her fathers had been trying every morning to get her out of bed, but she just stared blankly wall. The best they could do was bring her dinner every night on a tray in her bed. More often than not they'd collect it at the end of the night with most of it left on the tray.

—

At the two week mark, she heard a knock on her bedroom door. Expecting her fathers, she didn't make any move to get up. Before she could realize what was happening she felt her eyes burn from the brightness of the sunlight and was staring at the unimpressed stares of Kurt and - of all people in this world - Santana.

She matched them with an equally irritated glare, and she had half a mind to yell at them on their poor manners, but then she remembered that for the past two weeks she made the resolve to stop caring about anything at all.

Her face immediately softened, and with a sigh she lowered herself back on the bed and opted to stare at the wall away from the window.

They walked around to the other side of the bed so that they could face her. "You can't keep doing this, Rachel. We're all hurting with her gone, but do you think that we're all holed up in our room, waiting for the pity party to start? Do you think it's fair that you're the only one that get's to fucking check out while the rest of us have to keep going on without her?" She could tell that she was about to keep yelling, but Kurt put a calming hand on her arm. Santana took a deep breath and when she took the chance to look up at her she saw tears in her eyes.

It hurt her more than she thought it could.

Kurt took a cautious step forward. "Rachel, you need to get up. Like she said, we're all hurting. But with that, we can support each other through this. You don't need to do this alone." He gave her an expression that comes across as hesitant, but then something in his eyes changed and he took a seat on the bed beside her. "I know that somewhere in the back of your mind you know this, but in case you're so far gone that you've forgotten, your NYADA audition is in two weeks."

She was just as surprised as they were when she gave out a firm, "No." It was the first time she'd spoken in weeks, and the words felt foreign on her tongue.

Kurt raised his eyebrows a little and said, "What do you mean, 'no'? I was there when you booked your audition, and I'm almost positive that it's in two weeks because it's the same day as mine and-"

"I _mean_ that I'm not going to my audition!" She almost knocked Kurt off the bed with the force of her abruptly sitting up. "Do you think that I can just go onto that stage and perform at my best with everything that's happened? What's the point of even trying when I know that Quinn is…that she's…"

"Dead. Quinn is dead, Rachel." She instantly recoiled at the words. "I think it's time for you to start accepting that." Santana's arms were crossed and she was looking at Rachel with such determination that she didn't know whether to cry or yell.

After a few moments she opted for the first option and spent the rest of the afternoon crying in their arms, with whispers of _I can't do this_ and _this isn't fair_ pushing past her lips.

—

Santana showed up two days later - alone this time. They stared at each other for a few minutes before Santana whispers, "She loved you, you know. I don't know if she ever admitted it to herself out of fear of judgement, or whatever, but she did. She loved you."

She couldn't think of anything worthwhile to say to that, because Santana said _loved_ and not _loves_. She realized that now that Quinn was gone she will always be in the past tense, which brought a whole new finality to everything. After looking at each other for few more minutes, with nothing more said, Santana left.

And because Rachel was still there in the present - no matter how much she wished she could go back to the past - she breathed out, "I love her, too."

—

She woke up one night screaming. She'd been having the same dream almost every night of finding Quinn's body on the side of the road, limp and lifeless; but in this dream she actually saw the crash and what it did to contort her body out of shape. It was horrible in ways that she didn't even know were possible and as she realized it was just a dream she was happy that she woke up before she could see more.

She stared at the ceiling and couldn't tell what she was looking at because her vision was so blurred by the tears. She grabbed her phone and dialed Quinn's cell phone again. It had become a comfort that she'd clung onto in the past month; being able to hear her voice for those 30 seconds gave her brief moments where she could fool herself into believing this wasn't real.

She waited for it to ring out, but instead of the usual melodic voice she was met with the harsh-

_The number you have dialed is no longer in service. This is a recording._

She felt panic course through her body and she hung up, only to dial through again. It started to ring and she was hoping that this was just a trick of her mind but-

_The number you have dialed is no longer in service. This is a recording._

She started to cry so hard that it woke her fathers up and they rushed into her room to see what was wrong. They held her tightly as she cried out _she's gone, she's gone, she's gone_ into the soft fabric of their t-shirts. She fell asleep in their arms that night.

—

It's the next day that she found herself sitting cross-legged on her bed, staring at her phone. She had been avoiding this moment, possibly because it could be the one thing to finally push her over the edge.

She couldn't breathe and the one voicemail she had been avoiding this whole time, the one that was received before this whole mess began, was staring her in the face.

_[New voicemail - April 20th - 4:32p.m. - Quinn Fabray - To listen to message dial 1]_

She saw it on the day of the accident, but something inside of her couldn't bring herself to listen to it after she had gone through the string of frantic messages everyone else had been leaving all night. It was as if something inside of her knew that something terrible had happened, and she didn't want to face what was possibly in that message.

But now she was desperate. This was it - the last thing that she could cling onto that was Quinn Fabray. She stared at the screen for a few moments longer before pressing '1' and bringing it up to her ear.

_[April 20th - 4:32p.m. - Quinn Fabray] Hey, it's me. Are you busy tonight because I wanted to see if you wanted to grab coffee at the Lima Bean? You've seemed…you've just seemed really stressed, lately. I know you have a lot going on right now, but things will work out, OK? You have that audition coming up soon and you should be focusing on THAT instead of everything else. Just…don't lose sight of that, alright? OK, I'm going to get my Mom to drop me off at the Lima Bean in case you want to come, but if you can't, don't worry because I have homework to catch up on anyway. I hope to see you soon. Bye._

She could feel the warm tears streaming down her face and she felt her heart caving into her chest. The immediate feeling of guilt hit her fast and hard right square in her chest, and she felt herself gasping for air. Quinn had been coming to see _her_ and if only she had told her that she wasn't available that night then maybe-

_To listen to this message again, click 1-_

She pressed 1 and listened to the message again. It wasn't until an hour later when she felt the words _don't lose sight of that, alright? _sink in.

She kept crying, but she felt something change inside of her and didn't stop listening to the message until Quinn's soft _I hope to see you soon_ began to blend into her dreams.

—

She woke up the next morning with a new kind of determination, the kind of determination that was reminiscent of the Rachel Berry from a few years ago. She opened her laptop and brought up every piece of preparation notes for her audition and got to work.

She looked down at her phone and felt her heart swell at the fact that even after death, Quinn Fabray was still the one to guide her through right and wrong.

—

She didn't make it into NYADA. It hurt her at first, but she couldn't expect much of herself when she had only given herself two days of full preparation for the audition. She knew the program was competitive and she took the loss in stride.

The first thing she did after reading her rejection letter was listen to Quinn's voicemail. It made her feel a bit lighter inside.

The second thing she did was look up apartments in New York.

—

She ended up sharing a two bedroom with Kurt, just like they originally planned to at the beginning of Senior year. He actually_ did_ get into NYADA, and she couldn't be happier for him. All summer she had been researching other schools in the New York City area that could provide her with a musical or musical theatre background. She found a few to apply to, and even re-applied to NYADA with an essay explaining the trials she went through in the previous year to explain why her first audition wasn't up to standards.

She found a job as a waitress in a nice restaurant close to her apartment. The tips were good and it was flexible enough that she could still make time to audition for small parts in the city.

With or without school, she was going to make it on Broadway, and whenever she had a particularly hard day she would listen to Quinn's voicemail and find her strength again.

—

She'd visit the grave whenever she was back home. She'd talk about her life in New York, how school was going, what kinds of parts she was involved in.

Sometimes she'd sit on the grass and talk about the kind of life they could have had together if Quinn were still alive.

She'd talk about things like her coming home after a hard audition, only to find herself immediately cheered up by finding Quinn dancing around the kitchen cooking and singing into the wooden spoon.

Or how she would most likely be the one to wake up first, but sometimes Quinn would surprise her and already be awake; she'd stand in the doorway and soak up the vision of Quinn laying on their couch readng a book, idly petting their cat in her lap.

Or how the first time Quinn published her first novel she would show up to be the first in line at the book signing, saying something cheesy like, "you can sign this with the message 'To Rachel Barbra Berry-Fabray, the prettiest girl in the room' but keep it a secret, I wouldn't want my wife to know." She'd give her a wink and Quinn would grin up at her, ending up signing something like, 'To Rachel Barbra Berry-Fabray, my one and only star'.

Or the fact that Quinn would be there on opening night of her first Broadway performance - front row and centre. She would take her final bow and when she leads the cast in saying their thank you's to the audience at the end of the show, she'd finish with, "And to my wonderful wife, I'd like to thank you. You'll always be the prettiest girl I've ever met, and so much more than that."

She'd talk about these things and at the end of every visit she'd whisper, "I know you loved me Quinn, but I will always continue to _love_ you."

—

She did make it to Broadway, some years later, and she knew that she had Quinn to thank for it.

She finished her first show and went out with the cast afterwards in celebration. When she arrived home, her first instinct was to listen to Quinn's voicemail. She sat with her phone in her hand and took in a deep breath before calling.

_You have no new voicemails. One saved voicemail. To listen to your messages, press 1 now. To-_

She listened to the message. As she closed her eyes and could form a vision of Quinn saying the words to her. For the briefest of moments, she felt angry at the world for taking Quinn away so young. Angry that Quinn hadn't been able to be here to share this with her. Angry that they had been so stupid when they were younger because they wasted what little time together dancing around their feelings.

But in that moment she also realized that it had been so long since the accident that she couldn't actually remember the real last words Quinn had said to her. She felt tears prickle at the corner of her eyes, and knew what she had to do.

_To listen to this message again, click 1. To save, click 7. To delete, click 9-_

She felt her heart stop as she pressed the button and allowed herself the few tears to run down her cheek. She had been clinging onto this message to prevent Quinn from being gone, but it had taken her this long to realize that she was never really gone at all.

Because Quinn was was there to push her to audition. Quinn was there to push her to move to New York. Quinn was there to push her on those hard days where she had gotten her third rejection of the week. Quinn was always there because Rachel had always kept her in her heart. With Quinn safely there, she was able to do all the right things.

She looked out her window and up at the sky before whispering, "I love you, Quinn." As she turned into bed that night she felt lighter and realized that she finally had found a way to get it right.

—

**A/N: R & R :) if you're on tumblr you can find me at turnandchasethewind [.] tumblr [.] com**


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